South coast swing - How to turn back the tide

Lord Knight of Weymouth outlines what Labour needs to do to win again in the crucial seaside constituencies along the south coast.

I remain the last Labour gain from the Tories – the only one so far this century - when I gained South Dorset in 2001. I was also the closest loser in 1997, missing out on the massive South Coast swing by just 77 votes. That swing saw us gain seats in Falmouth, Plymouth, Southampton, Portsmouth, Hastings, Brighton, Dover, the Medway towns, Harwich, Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth. All we now have left on the coast are three seats in Plymouth and Southampton as the pendulum swung back just as decisively last year, costing us over a dozen seats.

So where do we go now in these crucial seaside constituencies with such volatile electorates?

First we must understand the dynamics of seaside seats.

The demographics are striking. The high proportion of asset-rich retirees hides considerable deprivation amongst families of working age. The working population is more likely to be in public sector employment, or in low paid private sector jobs in care and hospitality. The best paid jobs were largely in defence and science.

What particularly characterises seaside towns are the areas, normally near the railways station, with large numbers of bedsits, and B&Bs. These are the neighbourhoods that swell in size in the summer with tourists, seasonal workers and vagrants. They are often highly deprived residents, unemployed and unregistered to vote.

In political terms I was always careful to look after the pensioner vote but not be too distracted by it. They were the bedrock of the solid Tory vote alongside the members of the Chamber of Trade. The core Labour vote live in the social housing estates and needed nurturing and their concerns around jobs, immigration, housing and “scroungers” needed a better response. But the swing voters were elsewhere.

These are largely in private sector housing – most as owner occupiers pressured by large borrowing for their housing, their car and on their credit cards. They need a double income and feel self reliant and struggling. They mostly vote, they may have some in-work benefit and rely on universal benefits like child benefit. They are ambitious for their kids and need decent public services. They worry about, more than worry for, the poor people living around the station.

The swing voters are the “squeezed middle”. This unhelpful phrase implies the bottom is not being squeezed – when it is disproportionately being hit by £18 billion of pain. And I can not think of anyone who would call themselves one of the “squeezed middle”, but they would identify themselves as one of the squeezed majority.

How do we then win them back?

Like elsewhere it is first and foremost where will the jobs come from? What happens if you lose your job? How can we give the kids a future without them leaving and going to the cities?

These towns are by definition on the periphery. Sometimes there is port business, like in Dover and Southampton, but they are otherwise not going to be a first choice for location sensitive businesses. There is a need for government intervention in these areas in the supply side of the economy. We need re-skilling and we need high bandwidth broadband – neither will come in response to the market. Quality of life is great. Crime is very low. Schools and the NHS perform well. But we don’t have the high wage jobs. Our future is in attracting higher wage footloose industries in the digital economy, in both the high technology and creative industries – if we can offer the skills.

Beyond the economy we need policies on housing, transport and sustaining high quality public services. Until we raise the average wage significantly we need some rapid solutions on affordable housing. Seaside towns attract a lot of seasonal homelessness. There is too much sofa surfing as young couples struggle to leave home and set up on their own. We did too little too late on housing when in office, and we now need new solutions in the towns of the periphery that rarely offer the big regeneration possibilities of the cities.

The periphery is also dependent on transport. The train I catch every week to Weymouth from London is slower than the Newcastle service. The roads are just as bad and the economic case for us, compared to connecting the big cities, is a near impossibility. At worst we need rail franchise that guarantee consistent quality services along the whole length of the line.

And as for public services? Forget choice based reform for us. If you live in Swanage the nearest secondary school is a 30 minute bus ride in Wareham or a 45 minute journey by ferry to Poole. For many services the only choice is “take it or leave it”. Incidentally, forget the Big Society. Swing voters are under pressure of time as well as money. They just want the local school and hospital to keep improving and a half decent response from the blue light services. They certainly don’t want to run them themselves.

We shouldn’t therefore fall in to the trap of simply being the ideological defender of big government; voters are as turned off by that as by ideological privatisation. Instead we need a pragmatism that starts with local accountability and then has incentives to collaborate rather than be autonomous. If we were really brave we would design policy starting in the peripheral parts of the country, because if it works without scale it is very likely to work with scale in large urban areas.

If Labour is going to have a workable majority, particularly after boundary reorganisations, then we must win back the south coast. That means campaigning hard, understanding the background of big swings that make them all winnable, and policies around jobs in the digital economy, affordable housing, higher standards of transport and quality public services.

Jim Knight was Labour MP for Dorset South from 2001 to 2010 and now sits as a Labour Peer in the House of Lords.